


there's a room where the light won't find you

by minorthirds



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Ending, Ensemble Cast, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2595413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minorthirds/pseuds/minorthirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To storm or fire the world must fall.</p><p>The second line of the prophecy plays out differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's a room where the light won't find you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piyo13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piyo13/gifts).



Mortality beds death the day of Long Island Sound's hurricane.

Of course, it is no freak accident to him. (Things stop being _freak accidents_ when you know what he knows.) And by the same token it is no freak accident to the legions of demigods, their faces upturned as the rains, as the gusts howl, too horrified to pray.

 _Flooding,_ Chiron later reports, to a scattered and bedraggled ragtag bunch of them, just _kids_ and this world chews them up and spits out the lucky ones. _Flooding and wind damage. And -_

His voice cracks. Everyone in the room flinches.

Even Reyna does, steadfast and impenetrable as she is, the fingers of her left hand tangled with Annabeth's right standing towering over her rocking chair, long brown hair plaited with things she might have told him once, once upon a time in a field before Bryce. (Before Bryce.)

And _he_ -

He covers his ears, bows his head like a monk in prayer and closes his eyes to this, pretends the silence is of his choosing.

 

 

 

 

Will Solace knows how to set broken bones and speak to frightened campers in a hushed voice, soothing their shivers with a warm drink and a warm smile, but Solace is not the one those with empty smiles and creased hearts turn to.

He wonders why that is when the first of them comes.

“Um,” is what she says, when he finishes his hushed conversation with Clovis (one shroud for Hypnos and he swallows hard, harder perhaps than he would for any other cabin, any other camper, because dreams are bonds and promises in themselves) and her nervous face raises some sort of misplaced ire in him because he's been nothing but cordial with _everyone_ and what do they _want from him?_

He almost sends her to Will on the spot because she's quickly turning pale but it seems his attention gives her leave to speak because her question is breathed in a whisper, reverent and unwilling in equal parts.

“Will I go to the Fields of Punishment?”

He thinks maybe his face softens a little.

He cannot remember what softness, empathy feels like to be sure.

 

 

 

 

He writes them all.

Names. Godly parents. Mortal parents. Cohorts, ranks. Ages. Places of birth.

For some the words keep coming and he writes entire epitaphs in the Greek he can manage.

For the Romans – for the Romans he exercises Italian, trying to do Latin a modicum of justice in his own hands because Reyna is in no condition to translate for his own personal homage.

And the one he _could_ ask. Well.

There is time for coming to terms _later._ ( _Later_ remains an indefinite.)

 

 

 

 

The names keep coming.

 

 

 

 

He keeps writing.

He keeps writing long enough that Chiron scrounges for pens in the Big House, because he can't borrow one anymore.

Then Chiron runs out of pens to lend to boys struggling to find themselves.

 

 

 

 

Hazel doesn't remark on the way his hair sticks up even more than it did, only smooths it with her gentle palms, brushes his cheeks with the sable backs of her hands, tilts a watery tired tight smile upon him with a word of appreciation as to the fact he doesn't “look like a sack of bones” so much anymore, ignoring magnificently the way her own ribs bump under her shirt; _senatus populusque Romanus_.

He doesn't ask and she doesn't answer, and so he doesn't fault her for the way her gaze drifts into the distance sometimes, glazes over, a seven-headed hydra cut to five and dripping ichor, perhaps.

She tells him about Octavian and every transgression he had made, her and Frank's work with the Legion, and the Louisiana twang lights on her words much less than it had when he first raised her from the Underworld, atonement of a kind only he can accomplish and only he can need.

Catholic sin does not leave him, a demigod but an Italian first, an Italian in the beginning.

 

 

 

 

Maybe it's the fitful sleep – Hades knows he passed out for days straight enough while hauling that statue that glows gold in the half-light across Europe – but his days have been passing in starts and stops like someone learning stick shift on one of Hephaestus' motorized chariots for the first time.

Hades cabin still isn't home even though he's spent hours at this point boring a hole in its wall with the force of his gaze. He didn't imagine the _Argo II_ to be any sort of home either but he still finds himself dreaming of the deck, of _his cabin_ that Hazel insisted he use while _they were -_

Hell's acne-riddled face is a daunting adversary to coming-to-terms but the _him_ is infinitely more difficult to make peace with. Days since _it_ and he's been cast adrift like so much flotsam in an ocean that looks much less forgiving without its master, choppy and grey under overcast skies.

Gods, he's a sap.

He is a sap and he had been led to believe that a burden shared is a burden halved; plenty of metaphors that fortune-cookie asshole of a _best friend_ had shared with him in the intent to create him a home.

Except it's not, and he's not home, and he wants nothing more than to cut and run from everything in his life, command the shadows that ate their fill of him to _take him home_ for the last time; the last time.

Maybe he'd be more eager to die if he didn't know what lay beyond.

 

 

 

 

Half the time he diverts the half-bloods that come to him to Will for some kind of counseling, because while death is his thing, consoling the living in the wake of their own mortality is not; he, who is constantly aware of the finest of lines between the two (especially after Bryce; _after Bryce_ ) can't remember what that childhood invincibility felt like and can't remember what it was to live without Death as a bedfellow.

Death nips at his heels like a puppy begging for scraps at the table, gnawing on the bony ankles of the people he holds most dear and there are no words for the responsibility that weighs him down like so many bricks in the Styx.

It is odd that he entertains the thought of turning himself in for a counseling session because the remnants of the fateful Seven look at him as if he is supposed to glue them together, now, as if he should know how to handle this and that's just unfair.

People wander the grounds, Greeks and Romans alike as the Twelfth Legion works to reestablish its military structure, with such lost looks that Camp Half-Blood ought be called the living Asphodel and it chills him to the bone and deeper because it shouldn't be like this.

The first two names, the last two names should not be there and they _should_ be and the _wrong_ that sets his teeth on edge thrums through him, raises the hair on his arms and they expect him to deal with it as if it shouldn't bother him – he is fourteen, he wants to scream and just because Death curls up with him under his bedcovers doesn't mean he knows how to _be_ when the people he cares about are no longer there.

 

 

 

 

Frank assumes Praetorship easily, uncontested.

No false Pontifex to twist arms with a soft word. It's dark, but there's one that was meant to happen the way it did – shining meteor casting the prophetic fire down from the sky, the calm before the storm.

By the same piece, no storm to stand in unfortunate, unplanned competition.

Frank touches his thinner arms, hands strong and broad. Seeking advice – support – he isn't sure it matters at this point, and isn't sure when the living stopped terrifying him.

He presses his lips to Zhang's forehead all the same, giving a blessing that is his to give in the wake of stolen time and stolen history, and another that should belong to someone else.

Taller. Broader. Lighter.

He is a discount neutral party, ambassador of Death – no augur, no Pontifex, and perhaps it's better this way.

Before Frank leaves he confides in him his fire-touched life, pulls open the drawstring and his delicate cool fingers leave the new praetor without breath. It is trust and a shared promise and he is honored to be told but it chills him that Frank does so in a halting whisper.

Penitent and he is not capable of absolution so they ought to stop trying.

 

 

 

 

Leo is absent of the usual surplus of noise and activity when he is finally discharged, crutches tucked under his arm rattling as much as his bones and teeth do and the elf looks more zombified than anything.

Nor does he have a joke to crack about it, mildly self-deprecating but entirely immune – no, this time, with Piper caging her fingers around his wrist, walking in time with his limp, his armor is shed and he knows it.

“Can I talk to you?” he says and he doesn't even pause to consider; he just nods and that's how he knows everything has changed. Because the two of them have never been comfortable around each other but he put up with it for Hazel, _for Hazel_ and for – for _him_ too, maybe, maybe to prove to someone that he can live outside the shadows without burning up in the flames.

Leo's fire is a guttering candle and he can feel Death waiting to encroach, called by his longing.

He doesn't like the idea of suicide. Partly because it hits too close to home, partly because Leo's too close to Home and he owes _him_ more than that.

“It should have been me,” he says and he's not too sure he disagrees with that. As terrible as it makes him. As ambiguous as the second line of the prophecy had been.

Leo's survivor guilt is severe but it's not even particularly unfounded as looking at any half-blood on Camp Half-Blood land will prove – losing one is a harsh blow, but _both_ of their _heroes -_

It's enough to dishearten Leo Valdez because they were both his friends.

It's even more for him, loving heroes from afar.

He thinks on that while Leo stands, thoughts tracing the sharp edges of the _he_ he has refused to consider. _Love?_

For him there is consequence. For him it is forbidden –

Because of fate and because of him they are only to become postscripts in the book of his history: the names of his devotions to the brazier of mortality, as if their loss is considered his penance.

“Thanks, man,” Leo is saying and for the beat of a heart it looks like he wants to say more, words rolling around in his mouth like marbles under his tongue, but it passes and he blinks and the corner of his mouth twitches as he swallows them down.

He moves towards the door and he lets him without a word – as he slips out he shares words with Piper outside for the shadow of a moment and then she steps in as he leaves, closes the door softly.

He inhales and holds a breath because she is precisely who he didn't want to see with _his_ name written on his heart, a revelation too long in coming that he doesn't want to realize.

And the way she rasps his name, tender, more tender than it has any right to be because they haven't been close either – it comes to him like an old television recording, her dragging him from the vase as his grip on life begins to slip – it's almost more than he can handle.

Almost. He winces rather than ask her to leave.

It is his luck that she notices, the carefully schooled mask of her face twitching for just a moment. “Is it a bad time?” she asks, still in that rasp, sandpaper voice from a metric ton of tissues and liters of tears – and the constant run of her voice. (For the first day he heard _his_ name on the breeze, over and over, sung in the Cherokee way laced with unconscious charmspeak that she might plead with the world to give him back.)

It will always be a bad time. He shakes his head; his hair's gotten long enough that he can feel it moving in counterpoint to him and he pushes the thought away. (Only one person would be brave enough to comment.)

“No,” he says because the one word is a struggle to force out. He is terrified of this. Expectant and terrified all at once and it's _worse_ right now, this very second because he cannot feasibly lock himself away and internalize sudden unwanted realizations when Piper is locked in here with him.

She accepts the assurance for what it is, at face value, and steps quietly carefully toward him; even in mourning her Aphrodite charm works against her, hair unkempt and harpy feather loose, clothes mismatched but still as charismatic as always.

A Cherokee tradition? He isn't sure but knows not to ask – now is not the time, if ever, and he catches himself grasping at thoughts that will let him pretend this is not about to happen.

She says his name again and he cannot force down the instinctual urge to shrink at her gentle tone. He is undeserving of her grace and he hopes she can't read it on his heart, in time with his thudding pulse, _I love –_ and then that sharp-edged absence.

Aphrodite's child pauses mid-step full of sympathy on hold as she cocks her head to the side and he almost swears aloud.

He can see her piecing it together.

The shadows bleed out from under his shoes and caress his calves and it's ridiculous that he's willing to sacrifice everything for this, the ability to remain unnoticed, to not be judged, because he _cannot help it_ and he's so _sick_ of hating himself and it's far too soon for the shadow-sickness to have released its hold on him and _one more jump_ could save him. Release him from this, from all of this.

Piper stops in front of him and her face is carefully blank, Love's girl recognizing him for what he is.

He freezes.

He is weak.

She runs her fingers along the frayed edge of a hole in her jeans.

“You loved him, too.”

It isn't a question.

He nods. (He is weak. In this moment incapable of untruth even without charmspeak influence.)

Piper's lips part into a delicately framed sigh.

Then he is tucked into her arms and she holds him tighter than even Hazel after his return from Tartarus and the way she squeezes the life (perhaps the _death_ ) out of him leaves him comfort-warm and comforted.

It is only after a moment that he remembers to return the embrace and his arms are too thin and too gangly but he manages to make it work nonetheless, cradling Piper gently as she chokes the air out of him, something like sorrow-relief.

They are weak together.

“ _God,_ Nico,” she whispers tearfully into his hair with the three or four inches she has on him and that. That gives him pause for the hair of a moment because for that moment there _is_ no pantheon; there is no godly half and Piper embraces her humanity, her Cherokee side to grieve her first young love in the way she lived for the first fifteen years of her life – it is telling that for a moment she is able to surrender half her existence.

He thinks he is incapable, now, of distinguishing between the two: distinguishing between a time _before_ and a time _after,_ constant in this existence, half-mortal and yet fully capable of leaving behind the love of others.

He's not altogether great at hugs anymore, rusty from disuse but he holds Piper more tightly, as if the pressure will keep either of them from breaking to pieces more than they already are.

And for a moment he allows himself to hope that maybe things will be okay.

 

 

 

 

The waves slam against the shore with enough fury to be heard even up at the Big House; it's been four days since the end of the war with Gaea and the gods have not made an appearance between them.

But Poseidon is not silent. The fevered churning of the sea is evidence enough of that.

And the lid of clouds that has not lifted even for a glimpse of the sun or the moon belies Zeus' slow-burning, calculated anger, unwavering but controlled.

(Perhaps once upon a time his father may have gloated; he is glad that is no longer the case.)

The Big House is silent but for the winds of the continuing mild storm banging the shutters; Mr. D is nowhere to be found, Chiron is likely visiting the infirmary set up as a makeshift tent the size of a second Apollo Cabin...

But he knows it is not empty.

Athena Cabin is worried for her wellbeing because they think to understand the extent of her pain; really, no one can understand what it is for someone who loved _him_ to feel that absence, listen for the dull roar of his constant hurricane and find nothing but the static sound of the world without it.

Annabeth eschews social interaction, shuts herself up in the Big House to nurse her wounds in silence like a proud feline.

He knows why _there,_ of all places. He knows the Minotaur story.

(For a moment he remembers a flurry of excited questions, when monsters were scarce more than numbers and cards to him and he pushes the memory away because it isn't time for this.)

The porch thumps hollow under his boots and he tries to pretend that this can be any house on any beach, anywhere, and he is paying only a courtesy visit – but the lie holds less than no water and it leaks out between his fingers when he curls them into a fist to knock on the door.

The sea breeze throws his hair into untamed tufts even more so than it usually is, crusting it into place with salt air, burns against his eyes – _Poseidon's favorite son._

He is only there for about five or six seconds before the door swings open to admit him.

And he nearly loses his nerve. But he swallows and tightens his fists and squares his shoulders – Camp Half-Blood t-shirt and _holy Hades does he miss his jacket_ but it's probably good it was what was shredded into ribbons by Lycaon and not him, honestly. (He would not do well as a werewolf.)

The door yawns before him and he steps inside, into the dimmed rec room, conscious of the upturned rug corner and the edge of the ping-pong table he runs his hand against as he continues through the house, knowing as certain as death that the door will shut itself behind him

With near-silent steps he moves into the hallway; passes the door to Chiron's office on the left and retraces his ten-year-old steps, remembering days when the demigod life was so shiny and new he forgot to cherish the last shreds of the mortal one.

(He thinks he sees Bianca moving ahead of him, her green hat and dark hair just beyond reach – but he thought to let her go, now, now that the shadow of her is no longer in Elysium.)

(He thinks he will never be able to let her go.)

A creak of a door causes him to pause before his toe rests upon the wood floor; he continues after a beat of hesitation towards the house's infirmary at the end of the hall, no longer a site of physical care because of the sheer bulk of injured from the battle.

The door is slightly ajar and he pushes against it with a gentle palm – its resultant squeak matches the one from a moment ago and the sigh he releases is even softer in volume.

She is sitting on one of the three small cots in the room and she is, to his eyes, a wreck.

Annabeth is as much of a constant to him as _him,_ and every memory he has of her is of an imposing young woman a few inches taller than the average, always either impeccably precise in her appearance or just the right level of disheveled to instill the deepest fears into the hearts of her enemies.

The figure sitting cross-legged with her untethered blond hair shielding her face from view is not who he remembers to be Annabeth, silent, a forceful intellect relegated to doodling various European architectural wonders in a sketchbook on her lap.

Her pencil scratches across the paper, mid-rendering a facade of Ionian columns, before she sets it down and looks up.

The breath he sucks in is an accident, but it is loud in the silence; her grey eyes, usually focused to laser intensity, wander and seem blurred, but what draws his attention are the dark circles under her eyes, deep enough almost to rival his own.

“Annabeth,” he whispers, almost against his will, but her lips draw into a tight line that almost, almost resembles a wan smile, and she pats the cot to one side, inviting him to sit with her.

With some reluctance he accepts the offer, sitting down as one would on a rickety old chair; the somewhat weak-looking cot holds his weight easily, and he begins to relax, to lay his hands across his lap rather than grab at the fabric of his dark jeans in a display of nervousness.

“I should have come earlier,” he says, voice softened by the ambient quiet.

The wind blows outside.

The sound matches the soft scratching of Annabeth's pencil, to the right of a hastily-rendered vase (he tucks the sudden wave of nausea under his tongue): her hand motions spell out a sentence in pale graphite.

 _It's been rough for you, too,_ it says, and he is somewhat unsure how to progress from here, because he had been prepared for a modicum of yelling but it seems that isn't to be the case.

“A vow of silence?” he asks, as if he hasn't already noticed; he offers the opportunity for her to meet him halfway, armed with the sketchbook as a tool for communication.

Another round of scratching. _It doesn't seem right._

That he can understand. The dead speak no longer.

She must think he is here for some words for _his_ epitaph and to that he shakes his head lightly, again feeling his hair moving against him. “Annabeth, I came to apologize.”

He waits for her to start writing but there is no telltale scratching sound – he looks up from his hands to see her with her head cocked just slightly to the side, inquisitive, not as guarded as she had always seemed to him, though perhaps his opinion had been skewed.

Her face reminds him that this is real, that he is about to do this.

He swallows hard.

Soon it won't matter. (He has made a decision.)

Annabeth must sense he bargains for time because one of her hands moves to cover his folded on his lap; she has never been much of a tactile person but he supposes silence likely plays a role.

Nonetheless it gives him just the smallest sliver of bravery.

“I... was unfair to you,” he begins, pulling the words up out of himself by sheer force of will as they try their best to get hooked in his throat. “For a while at the beginning. I misjudged you and mistreated you.”

She begins to sketch circles with her thumb over his entwined knuckles, as if giving him permission to continue.

“I was more of a hassle than a help, when it came to your quest – I was angry and terrified. And probably more resentful than I'd like to admit.”

Something in the rhythm of her thumb stutters but she picks up the action where she left off.

It is the point of no return and he plows through it headfirst. “I envied you, Annabeth,” he says, and the rasp in his voice is not one he permits to be there but it exists all the same. “I know you thought that it was you that I -”

That word gets stuck, yet, and he swallows it down and clears his throat.

To his left she sits and he looks up, looks her in the eyes, because he owes her this – all of this, all of the honesty he did not permit himself to share before he ran out of time. “I was jealous of you because of _him._ ”

Annabeth stares at him and through him all at once and it's a relief, in a way, to see cogs turning again; it's familiar, and he's thankful to see the Annabeth he remembers at a time like this.

Her thumb freezes too, until she blinks and her other hand drifts across the sketchbook, fingers scuffing the paper, to cup his folded hands as well.

He doesn't like the taste of these words.

“I was jealous of you because I was in love with him, too.”

It hangs in the air between them, as his lips draw back into a grimace and he watches the compression and the encoding of this information in the movement of her face; lips tracing the words, jaw slackening, uncomprehending for the passage of a heartbeat.

He thinks that it is unsurprising that she is as repulsed as he is; he owes it to _him_ to clear the air between them, even if it involves confessing some rather... unsavory things.

Perhaps he should be kneeling at the confessional, head bent and whispering these secrets, these sins – he is an Italian first and an Italian at the end, hoping for absolution though it could never do him any good.

The soft squeeze of her hands on his interrupts his thoughts and he blinks, refocusing on the daughter of Athena seated next to him; not fast enough, however, to see the movement of her hands.

Soft, and cool, and applying the gentlest of pressure to his cheeks – she cups his face in her hands, runs her thumbs against his high cheekbones, lets her fingers speak for her words she can't put voice to, pressing a finger against his lips.

_Hush._

Annabeth accepts his transgression, his sin in lofty silence, absolves him of guilt with the way her hands learn the truth in his face. It is an intimate confessional and it nearly feels inappropriate to breathe, in the presence of one as holy as her.

She hardly notices; with gentle fingers she tugs down the tip of his chin to reach his forehead with her lips, in the same manner he did Frank. A gentle press of the mouth directly upon his brow, and she replaces it with her own, resting their foreheads together; searching for something, perhaps, just in the manner that he is, and by the same token they search together.

His hands meet hers, closing his eyes to this, this dark room where the light doesn't reach and this grim reality they both share, twin holes in chests and the gentle tempest outside should be theirs to love but fate is never fair to children of gods.

 

 

 

 

The ceremony comes and goes.

His throat goes sore from the hour of speaking, Greek and Italian in equal measure; his eyes burn green and orange flames against his eyelids when they flicker closed; the beginnings of a dull headache rumble at his temples.

He saves the two of them for the end, and by that time half the Legion and most of Camp Half-Blood is in unrestrained tears; glancing up, he catches a glimpse of the rest of the Seven standing together at the front of the crowd, Reyna beside Annabeth with hands held between the six of them in solidarity.

Hazel's and Leo's faces are damp. The rest stand with stone visages.

It is the first time he has spoken their names since the end of the war, and the sudden gust of wind that ruffles his hair proclaims the time of the occasion.

He breathes deep of the smoke and begins with a steady tempo: “Jason Grace.”

Reyna approaches the podium to share some words for him after the epitaph, spoken first in measured Italian and then once more in Ancient Greek to honor him properly: a Roman too Greek to be Roman.

He grips her forearm for support as he steps back and allows her to speak.

The Legion meets the words with fierce determination, a white-knuckled hold on silent respect for their fallen praetor.

The name “Perseus Jackson” is met with much worse.

It is unplanned but instinctual, the way the campers call back the name to him; some strong, others shaky, and he thinks for a moment he catches a glimpse – no, he is _sure_ that is Grover Underwood shoving through the crowd to emerge between Reyna and Annabeth.

She holds his hand even tighter, and as he continues he sees other faces too, too familiar. Clarissa la Rue, twin tear tracks down her face. The Stoll brothers, Travis and Connor, contained for once, devoid of nervous energy and with their shoulders pressed together.

Will Solace. Head respectfully bowed; not expected for this ceremony, but likely with some Abrahamic background.

He speaks his piece first in Greek and then in Italian, the reverse of Jason as the two were in history, in personage: too Roman to be Greek, a praetor himself.

Poseidon's favorite son, child of a Great Prophecy. Hero of a thousand quests and many more fresh faces, new campers and old alike that looked up to him as their own personal epic hero.

 _Homer ought to speak verse on him,_ he remembers thinking, as he cedes the podium to Annabeth, who speaks for the first time in seven days; her voice is raw from disuse and her words raw from being of Percy's best friend; closest confidante; love.

The conspicuous lack of the familiar spark of envy is a quiet relief.

Percy's shroud is blue and Jason's is gray, and he hands Reyna and Annabeth a torch for each of them, closes his eyes and nods for the cloth to be put to the flame.

Reyna is silent as she does so.

“This is your second shroud,” he hears Annabeth whisper as a trident turns to ash on the breeze.

 

 

 

 

The morning after the ceremony he awakens before dawn.

His belongings fit into one small backpack.

He toys with the Hades Mythomagic figurine for a few moments before he slides it into the front pocket, forcing away words shouted in hurt and anger, a chasm in marble.

Hades cabin is no home to him and he feels no remorse for leaving it, though he hopes it will become a home for someone, someday – it was good of Percy to work for something for him, give him a home in location (and it is good to think his name properly, at last); the fact that it exists is one thing, but the suffocating air is another.

He doubts he will find home, after this.

Maybe that's the point.

A week, he thinks, is probably enough to get over shadow-sickness.

Pointedly, he does not consult Will. (He doesn't wish to be told he is wrong for not feeling at home at this camp.)

He makes his way through the camp by the light of the moon, slipping soundless past cabins, the arena, the strawberry fields.

As he passes the Big House he fails to notice a shape on the porch stand and tap down the steps.

As he reaches the border of the grounds, in line with Thalia's tree and the Athena Parthenos, he pays for the mistake.

On a whim he turns around – and comes face-to-face with Reyna.

Donned not in praetor gear but in unassuming black, her long hair braided into place, it is no wonder he missed her among the shadows; however, her crossed arms elicit a stab of anxiety.

“You're stopping me?” he says at the same time she asks “You're leaving?”

The two stare at each other.

“I don't belong here,” he says, one hand on the strap of his backpack.

“I don't either,” Reyna responds, and the unexpected answer nearly forces him back a step.

Not pausing for his confusion, she elaborates. “The Legion needs me. That's true. And my place is with them – but Annabeth needs me too. You see?”

He doesn't. (In fact he is surprised that the two are close enough for Annabeth to exist on Reyna's priority list.)

She seems to sense that he doesn't; with a sigh, she shakes her head. “You will always have a place to belong, even if it doesn't feel right sometimes. But other things need you, too. People need you. _You_ need you.”

He hears her words and thinks of himself speaking them to Jason, and the thought punches him square in the solar plexus; she is right, as usual, and she takes advice he gives to others and throws it at him instead, as if saying _You said this. You would say this. Now live by it._

Perhaps it touches him more than he would think to know someone like Reyna. To know that he has a home, albeit one that requires some fixing-up every now and then.

Two homes, really, if she has her way. At camp and with the Legion.

“You're right,” he concedes with a sigh. “Thank you.”

“You would say the same,” she says with finality, as if that removes any action from her part; and, hell, he would do that too.

Perhaps they are more similar than he had realized. Big ways and small ways – their differences being the smallest, but the most crucial.

It is what allows Reyna to lead and causes him to be cast out.

She clasps his shoulders and stares into his eyes. “Please come visit,” she begs him. “Please.”

He promises.

He does not swear on the Styx.

 

 

 

 

Nico buys a dollar menu burger and a medium Coke for the dead, rather than Happy Meals.

(The toy isn't even anything Mythomagic-related, and his money is scarce.)

It seems much easier now than under Minos' direction, deep as he is in the Redwoods, prying a chunk of earth out from between the trees rather than summon skeletons to dig graves for him. The incantation is the same, though the offering is much smaller; he knows himself now, knows how to focus his powers, and not accidentally call the long-dead ghost of Theseus to answer his twenty questions.

The words ring out before him, as if taking on some corporeal form, though the impression is gone as quickly as it appears.

Rather than a shifting mass of specters, this time it works exactly as he wants it; at least, it's what he's hoping as the solitary shade creeps through the trees and bends to drink from his meager sacrificial offering.

Jason raises his head and peers up at him through his glasses.

“Nico?”

The tone is one of wonderment.

He doesn't trust himself to speak; a choked nod is his only response.

Jason's ghost glances about them, turns back to him with a wry smile. “Nice location,” he says, tongue-in-cheek, as if nothing is different.

As if nothing has changed and he's not _dead_ or anything.

“Hey,” he says, apologetic. “Neeks, hey, come on. I'm joking.”

He cannot help the tears that stream down his face, betraying him, hot and broken. “ _Jason,_ ” he tries to rasp, but his throat is tight and this was a terrible idea.

A terrible idea. He should have waited, but – no, what if he had reincarnated? _Now or never,_ he had thought to himself, standing outside the McDonald's and feeling a cruel sense of irony.

“That's me,” the dead ex-praetor says, and it's not fair. It isn't _fair._

“Jason.” He manages to wrangle control of himself with some frenzied struggling. “There's something I have to tell you.”

“That you have really bad taste in burgers?” He is joking for the sake of levity, and he knows that, but the levity is what is making this difficult, because it's so _easy_ to pretend that the last week has been just an awful dream, and soon he'll wake up on the deck of the _Argo II_ in late July.

But it hasn't, and he won't, and he bites down on the inclination to accept that false reality.

“I told Annabeth.” He has to say it. “About... what you found out in Split.”

“How'd she take it?” Jason seems honestly curious, which is good of him, because right about now he really _fucking_ misses his best friend.

His lips draw back into a tiny smile. “Better than I thought.”

“That's good,” the ghost of Jason says. “That's really good. I'm proud of you, man.”

He doesn't let his smile waver as he moves onto the next topic. “I discovered something, in the meantime. I haven't been entirely honest with you.”

“Oh?” Jason folds his arms, squints through his glasses. “You don't suddenly hate Mythomagic, do you?”

“No!” It's _unfair_ that he laughs at that, too, while he's still crying and smiling and holy _shit_ does he miss Jason. How much _easier_ and _kinder_ everything would be if Grace still walked the earth.

He sighs softly. “No,” he says again. “It's... it's really about you.”

“You've wanted to shave my hair off from the very beginning.”

“Cut it out, Grace,” he says with a smaller laugh, the tears coming a little less quickly as he begins to compose himself a little more. “No... I came to the conclusion that I had, you know. Feelings. For you.”

There is a pause.

“That's it?” Jason asks, after a blink.

He starts, having tensed during the pause for some kind of horrifying posthumous rejection. “What do you mean, ' _that's it?_ '” he asks hotly, probably a little more offended than he would be normally, but definitely anxious enough to justify it.

Jason waves his transparent hands between them, trying to stave off his sudden dark and violent vibes. “Dude, I'm kidding! I mean, I know you're not good at this whole feelings thing. Jupiter knows I'm not either. But – alright, the best way –“

He looks like he is struggling and he nearly steps in to assist but Jason has it handled; “I'm just gonna say it. I did too – but the whole Piper thing...”

He nearly tips over from the wave of _something_ that hits him at Jason's declaration; surprise, relief, whatever it is, he is uncertain. “ _You -_ ” he tries to choke out; even after Jason's reaction, Piper's, Annabeth's should help with his opinion of the whole thing in itself, he still finds himself expecting disgust and anger and this – _This –_

Just pisses him off _more,_ to be honest, because Gaea took _Jason_ from him. Yes, Percy, but Jason too, and he is not ready, and he will never be able to face this head-on.

Jason seems to sense some of his emotional turmoil. “I'm sorry,” he says, soft. “I would have told you. It's just –“

“– We ran out of time,” he finishes Jason's sentence, because that's what it really is. That's what it is, and nothing can change that.

His time is up, on Jason. Jason's time is up unless he chooses reincarnation.

“Aim for the Isles of the Blest,” he tells him. “It's where you belong.”

“Thanks, Nico,” he says. His voice dims in volume: a precursor to the spell losing power. Their time is up here, too.

Jason almost goes to touch him, but the moment passes and his spectral hand quivers in midair.

“Don't fault me for saying it, alright?” he just about whispers, enough that he has to lean in close to hear.

Whispering is the way it should be, for this. “I love you,” Jason murmurs into his ear, and the tears never really stopped but they definitely start again, so hard that he tries for breath and inhales salt.

“I love you, too,” he confesses to Jason's ghost, the edges of him blurring to nothing, the spell rapidly decaying.

“Hey,” Jason says. “Be safe, okay? For me.”

Nico agrees.

Nico swears it on the Styx.

 

 

 

 

Moments later, Jason's ghost fades into the night air.

 

 

 

 

Moments later, Nico's last tear soaks into the needle-coated ground.

 


End file.
